Apply VAT to private school fees: note

Central fiscal result

-£1.7bn - Net fiscal impact in 2029-30

Low case: -£2.0bn. High case: -£0.8bn. Positive numbers are fiscal costs or borrowing pressure. Negative numbers are Exchequer savings or receipts.

Scenario and baseline

• Models apply vat to private school fees by 2029-30.
• Baseline is current policy or published departmental plans.
• Central case uses published party or official anchors where available.
• Wider manifesto interactions are excluded unless stated.

Affected population

• Affected units are people, firms, households or providers depending on policy.
• Direct exposure follows the manifesto or government target group.
• Indirect exposure includes suppliers, workers, consumers and taxpayers.
• Weakest counts are widened in the low and high cases.

Gross impact

• Published anchor or scenario central is +£1.7bn in 2029-30.
• Gross costs or receipts are adjusted for behaviour and delivery risk.
• Tax, benefit or procurement offsets are separated in the fiscal build-up.
• The range is deliberately wider where implementation detail is thin.

Fiscal build-up, central case

• Gross tax or receipt yield: -£2.1bn
• Behavioural and avoidance response: +£0.3bn
• Administration and compliance cost: +£0.1bn
• Other tax-base interactions: +£0.0bn

Central net impact: -£1.7bn in 2029-30.

Behaviour and pass-through

• Low case assumes stronger delivery or receipts than central.
• Central case applies moderate behavioural leakage and pass-through.
• High case allows weaker delivery, larger take-up or higher costs.
• Output effects follow incidence, capacity and investment channels.
• Distributional gains do not automatically imply GDP gains.

Phasing

• 2026-27: -£0.2bn. Phased implementation and take-up.
• 2027-28: -£0.6bn. Phased implementation and take-up.
• 2028-29: -£1.2bn. Phased implementation and take-up.
• 2029-30: -£1.7bn. Phased implementation and take-up.

Main source groups

• Benzarti, Carloni, Harju and Kosonen, "What Goes Up May Not Come Down" (Journal of Political Economy, 2020): VAT changes are not always passed through symmetrically to consumer prices; relevant to private-school and consumption-tax incidence.
• HM Treasury, "Autumn Budget 2024 policy costings" (2024): Official policy costings show tax and spending impacts, including behavioural assumptions where published; used for implemented Labour tax measures.
• Mirrlees and review team, "Tax by Design" (Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2011): Efficient tax systems should avoid narrow bases and poorly targeted reliefs that distort decisions; useful benchmark for judging tax-base changes and exemptions.
• Office for Budget Responsibility, "Economic and fiscal outlook October 2024" (2024): The OBR assessed employer NICs, public investment and Budget-wide output and inflation effects; supports economic-impact and tax-incidence assumptions.
• Labour Party, "Change: Labour Party Manifesto 2024" (2024): The manifesto sets the policy pledge, funding claim or target being modelled; used as the policy definition and manifesto baseline.